


Why Didn't You Marry Her?

by Zoya1416



Series: THE PATRICIAN'S BABY [8]
Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Absent Mothers, F/M, Teens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-17
Updated: 2014-05-17
Packaged: 2018-01-25 10:39:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1645667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zoya1416/pseuds/Zoya1416
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Robbie Vetinari is now thirteen and a full student at the Assassin's school. He's being taunted about his mother.</p><p>(We jump back and forth in our Patrician's Baby Series, like looking at pictures on different pages on an album.<br/>Or like I'm doing because I didn't set out to write any but the first three, and the rest have come to me out of order. Deal.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Why Didn't You Marry Her?

**Author's Note:**

> Robbie's mine. Oh, and also Ankla and Durban Downey--Pratchett wouldn't claim them even if he created them.

Robbie Vetinari walked into his father's office and said, "Why didn't you marry her?”

“Hmm?” His father looked up at him over the spectacles he wore openly these day.

He knew exactly what his child meant, but he hadn't survived being Patrician for thirty-two years by admitting things.

“Don't 'hmm' at me like that, I know you're stalling. Why didn't you marry my mother?”

He was getting a crick in his neck. Robbie was thirteen and as tall as he was. No one of even normal size got that near him.

“Sit down. I hate looking up at you.”

Robbie marched up to the desk, sat on the edge, and scattered the whole pile of papers Vetinari had been perusing. 

Vetinari stood up quickly. He hadn't gotten to stay Patrician this long by letting people attempt to push him around.

“Pick up those papers. And Sit Down.”

He didn't exactly have the leaden tones of Death, but he was quite furious, and he got quiet when he was angry.

Robbie scrambled off the desk, picked the papers back up, and sat down with a scowl. “Why didn't you”—

—“I heard you before. What has put this into your mind? You've known your whole life that you mother and I weren't married.”

“Yes, but...” the boy stopped, and looked very young again.

Vetinari ground his teeth to keep from sighing. You always heard about how difficult these years were, in children who had enough nutrition and health, anyway, to be difficult, as opposed to those struggling to get enough food in their mouths. What they didn't tell you was that it was not only difficult, it CHANGED every day. They ate all the time, slept all the time, fought with friends at the Assassin's Guild school all the time, risked your deepest ire, and that of your unwilling ally, by seeking out alcohol again, more successfully this time. 

The latest thing was that this once happy boy who could read by three was refusing to do his course work. That had happened yesterday, at the Guild. Lord Downey had wasted no time in sending Vetinari the news that his son had skived off. Somehow he was sure that other fathers didn't get this warning for one day's truancy. Today he was here again, still not working, and for some reason angry about his mother.

It wouldn't do to let his son work up heat again.

“Robbie, why are you asking me this?”

“they said i was a bastid 'coz you did't marry her.” very small voice.

First, facts. “Certainly, according to our laws, you are a bastard. Your mother and I were not married when you were born. This means less than nothing, because I have no estates that you could inherit. It would mean a great deal more to Sammie Vimes, you see, because he couldn't have his family's money and estates if Duke and Duchess Vimes hadn't been married. He couldn't inherit.”

“He wouldn't be Duke?” The tall blond boy who every day reminded him of his mother was puzzled.

“No. He would not become Duke upon his father's death. And he would not inherit the estates. I'm not sure who would, but some cousin or another of the Ramkins. There are laws.” He stared at his son, who was now frowning, looking at his hands.

“But you've had your whole life to know we weren't married. What's stirring this up?”

“Ankla and Durban said she begged you to marry her, and you refused.”

It would be those two. Part of the problem with the Downey boys was that they were two of those Robbie was close to. His fault, for encouraging the friendship when the boys were little, although he was sure he hadn't invited them over any more than others. The problem with Downeys was that they stuck to you. Like unpleasant substances on the Ankh-Morpork streets.

“Why would you believe them? They weren't even there. Their father wasn't even there. And you know we've had out whole lives hashed out in front of the newspapers. If this had been true, it would have been published before now." (And if it had been published, he would have taken the newspaper office apart.)

The other thing people didn't tell you was that your children would use errors in your judgment to excuse errors in theirs. The Vimes' were now having to face Sammie's getting drunk several times recently, and the boy always countered with the line, “HE got drunk for twenty years, Ma, and you won't even let me get drunk once!”  
Sam and Sibyl were fighting about it. Sam wanted to beat his child 1) for being rude to his mother, 2) for refusing to see reason in the plea, “don't do as I did, do as I say,” and 3) for taking down all his friends with him on his escapades. The Assassin's Guild does beat their students, Sybil said, so we don't have to do it twice.

He mentally left the Vimes' to stew.

It was bad enough for him that he was afraid his son would use his, at age forty-eight, single episode of intercourse with the boy's mother to justify some great bouts of wenching. And he hadn't wenched at 13, or even 19, mostly because he was too proud and shy to ask anyone. But that was not the question of the moment.

He did not want to talk about this. He'd never thought that he'd have to talk to anyone about that night. Yes, but it here it was again, popping up to the surface today.

“Robbie. Marriage didn't come into the situation because she had already told me she was leaving in the morning, before we even went to bed together. That's almost the first thing she said to me”—he was back in that evening again.

“I can't stay up very late, I have to leave in the morning.” Long blonde hair, deep blue-violet eyes, deeper than the light ones he and his son shared. Laughing. Drinking a glass of wine and pouring another for him. Telling him fantastic stories of drama, adventure, bloody hunts, perils, hidden waterfalls where she'd swum naked, lush, green islands, and especially how she'd enjoyed these things with her husband, who'd died.

It was seductive enough at the time, and later he realized exactly how seductive she'd been. Telling him she had to leave, when she knew that was one thing which would rush him, bring him to her that night. She had a way of making him see her, whether she was so hot in the nights in Omnia that she'd had to take off all her clothes and then hide on the roof so some Omnian priest wouldn't arrest her, or when she'd been so cold that she'd had to kill the ice bear to get its fur to warm her, again, naked body.

She'd been hunting him purely for her sport, never planning any more than a single meeting.

But that wasn't her son's fault.

“Robbie, I can't explain it to you now, but your mother didn't want to marry me. I know that. I don't know whether I would have married her, although I certainly would have seen her again”

—and he was back again. He would have seen her again and again if he could have made her stay in Ankh-Morpork. He would have taken her to the finest restaurants, brought her to the Palace to eat with him, and talk again, and all that. He would have bought her the finest clothing, the finest fabrics, given her beautiful things to wear. Jewelry—and now his mind leapt to the heartstone he'd wanted to give her—deep red ruby an inch wide, set with opals on the sides, hung on a long chain of gold. 

“Look. Come with me.”

He pushed the boy ahead of him into their apartments. He went to a deep drawer at the side of his bed, covering the exact pattern of movements in its lid, and pulled out the necklace he'd had made. 

“I knew she didn't want to come back. She's the kind of woman who can't stay still. But after she left (left me forever, he thought. Then frowned at his soul. He was flint-hearted. He had a city to run.) that next morning, I had this made for her. I wrote her. But she didn't want to come back. So the necklace is still here.”

“She left you? Not the other way?”

“No. We still might not have married, because we are so very different, but if she'd stayed, if I'd been able to make her stay—I would have tried very hard to be the best man I could for her.”

“So it was me she didn't want. She didn't want me?”

“Robert Vetinari, we've been over this. She had no idea who you were. Who you were going to be. She didn't want to be tied down, she wanted to go on”—like a great comet which circles the Disc once in a hundred years—“being who she was.

“She's never seen me since I was a week old.”

“No.”

“But she knows when my birthday is, and she sent me presents, at least at first.”

“Yes, your zoo.”

“I still love Fluffy.” His first animal, the four-horned Brindisian antelope.

Vetinari smiled. “I don't love all the animals, but I'm glad you do.”

“Is she dead?”

He didn't know. There had never been another animal since the first twenty-six, some of them so wildly inappropriate it was still more evidence she had no concept about parenting.

He'd sent out detectives, but not many, because he couldn't justify it on Ankh-Morpork's expense. If she wanted to hide, she knew how better than anyone. 

“I'm not sure.”

Then he looked at his large golden son, and thought hard about words to say to make it right. You didn't get lessons in this when you were becoming, and staying, Patrician. But at heart he was only a man who loved his son, and used all his imagination to raise him. 

“But I tell you, I couldn't love you more if I'd married a hundred times. There are tribes in Klatch where you can have more than one wife, you know.”

Robbie was surprised. “No.” Then he got an interested look on his face. Vetinari could easily follow. He drew the boy back to his whimsy. Whimsy! He did not have whimsy!

“But maybe not a hundred. Maybe only twenty. What would you do if you had twenty mothers sitting around asking you why you wouldn't do your school work, then?”

He tried on half a dozen different voices. He'd had to learn how to camouflage his voice in school, and was still good at it.

The purest lower-class he could manage. “Robbbieee Vetinarriiii—I'm callin' ya now. Git in here and do yer work or I'll beat yer, y' hear !”

The most aloof Ankhian and chilly. “Robert. Why Are You Doing This TO ME. You Must Do Your Work.”

“Robbie, sweetie, my oot 'ickle baby, (he could still remember Bobbi talking to Robbie like this.) Peeze do oor schoolwork 'ickle baby, or you'll be the death of me. PEEZE!”

And his Margolotta imitation, although he did not want her to know he did one. 

“I vant you to do your verk. You are a bad boy ven you do not do your verk. Vat vill I do vith you?”

“Vith?”

“Vith. And now you haff better haff your dinner vith me and get back over to zee Guild. You haff much verk to do, I zink.”

Robbie laughed, and went to their dining room. 

Tallulah, you bitch, he thought. You have no idea what you've missed. If I did find out you were alive, I wouldn't tell him. Yes, I would, because the Times would find me out if I didn't. I wish I could find out tomorrow that you were dead in a ditch. I wish I could find out tomorrow that you'd come back to get your necklace. 

But he's my heartstone now, not you. Never you.


End file.
